Jasper Johns Is [Not] Over Painting

a jasper johns print with an oval-shaped image of a skeleton figure holding a skull at its crotch and wearing a hat standing among alphabet stencils and asl charts, and other johns imagery, all askew as if it's stored in a jumble against a brick wall, which has been overpainted in thin white acrylic, lightening but not obliterating many of the composition elements. a 2025 work at matthew marks gallery
Jasper Johns, Untitled, 2025, acrylic over print, via Matthew Marks Gallery

Turns out Jasper Johns has not stopped painting after all. Matthew Marks’ preview for Art Basel Paris includes an untitled work from 2025 that’s an overpainted print. It’s a mode he’s used a lot, for many years. I think it’s like this one from 2018, with the skeleton in Johns’s image basement.

a 2018 jasper johns print with an oval-shaped image of a skeleton figure holding a skull at its crotch and wearing a hat standing among alphabet stencils and asl charts, and other johns imagery, all askew as if it's stored in a jumble against a brick wall

Johns showed a variety of skeleton-related works, including paintings and monotypes, at Marks in 2019, including, obviously, several works with the Little Guys stick figures. Besides the use of acrylic, the other thing to note about this new painted work in Paris is that it has no Little Guys. And the only conclusion I can arrive at is that I have made too much of a public deal about this motif, and Johns has set out to obliterate them from his work. My bad.